DIP Corporation (2379) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you very much for participating our briefing session despite your busy schedule. We'd like to start Q2 financial results for the fiscal year ending February 2026. The theme for this year is GO MAJOR. We have Spot Baitoru for spot part-time job positions, and we want to make this business a major business. That's why we are choosing this GO MAJOR for this year's theme. Now let me talk about the Spot Baitoru and the market situation. Now mass media is covering a lot about this unpaid wage situation. The Ministry of Labor issued a leaflet in July this year. It was about when the labor contract is considered to be made. The Ministry of Labor is clearly stating for the first come first served basis job opportunities, it is as of matching when the contract is considered to be made. Especially major agencies, they were saying that when -- as of check-in, the employment contract is being made. But the Ministry of Labor is sharing their view. By the way, DIP from before, we've been saying that any time matching is being made, that is considered to be the time contract is being made. So we are not being impacted at all following this view. However, other agencies, they have changed their service -- terms of services starting from September. And when we joined the association in March, we were already receiving this message. And we checked the situation at the time, and we found that there were a lot of cases, the employer side were canceling the job opportunities on a very last-minute basis. And we believe this is not only a legal issue. Ethically, it is a big problem. Of course, legally, this is a big issue. And that's why now people -- a lot of people are talking about this situation. But workers, they believe that they got the job opportunities, but these opportunities are taken away. They are being damaged. And our industry, we have to appreciate the workers. We can operate our business only thanks to the workers. So workers are the most important customers, and we should not treat them that way. It's too insincere. That's why we have been taking actions. We are now asking companies to compensate 100%. And for the past cases, we are paying the unpaid wages, recognizing it was our thought that we could not identify the situation earlier. The industry has to become much healthier. And the statute of limitation for wage claims is 3 years. So for the past 3 years, we have to actually pay the unpaid wages. And following the announcement made by Ministry of Labor, a lot of customers have been asking us what exactly is going on. So we decided to hold a seminar. And actually, we held the seminar. The first seminar was held on September 5. And 1 week prior, we communicated that we were going to hold this seminar. And we were thinking if we could attract like 100 customers, that should be enough. But actually, we received as many as 2,000 applications to participate in this event. And we held another one on October 3. And in total, we had more than 2,000 participants. So we could receive a very good reaction, and satisfaction level was also very high. And the event was covered by various media, including WBS, World Business Satellite, which is a news program. And this will tell how much people paying attention to this situation. And this unpaid wage problem is a serious problem for the society, this is a problem which has to be overcome. So even as of today, a lot of media asking us, they are searching for -- they are covering us in their media. And the other day, labor newspaper, there was a comment made by Tokyo Labor Bureau, and taking actual action, it was covering the fact, we, DIP, has been taking action. This project, well, health -- the industry has to be very healthy and unpaid wage is illegal. The black market has to become white market. That's why we are calling this project Othello Project. Of course, we are aiming to win more market share. But following our actions, and which has been different compared to our peers, a lot of customers are now switching over to our service. A major food service industry customer in terms of unpaid wages, they are currently considering to pay for all of them. And another logistic industry customer, they decided to switch over to our service. And another major retail industry customer, they are now conducting survey to understand what is going on. And especially thinking about the reason why a customer is switching over to us, that was because as of March, when we were asking customers to pay for these unpaid wages because payments -- agreement is already -- contract agreement is already made. Other major customers -- no, other major agencies, they were considering check-in is the time when the contract is being made. And if the customer side is going to be changed their contract and says, the agreement is made when the matching takes place. If that's the case, the agency was saying that it was not going to be responsible. So they were not sincere enough. That's why they decided to switch over to us. They thought that keep having business with such a company is at risk in terms of compliance or governance, and also in terms of reputation. That was the decision or the reason they made -- the reason they decided to switch over to us. And this was not the only company. A lot of customers have switched over to us. Next is about our AI-related initiative. Dip AI, through communication, we can introduce job opportunities to workers. And now we've been able to -- well, this leveraging AI technologies to introduce job opportunities is now becoming more common across the industry, but still, we are different compared to our peers because we have as many as 2,000 direct salespeople who are visiting the customers in person. They can conduct hearing -- in-person hearing. And also, we have a strong customer base. The number of customers count 150,000. On the other hand, we have a lot of users, job seekers. A lot of data information have been accumulated within our dip AI. Dip AI is continuously evolving. As a result, our AI accuracy strength is becoming stronger and stronger, and it will keep evolving even in the future. And this dip AI, it's used for job searching and create resume or setting me interview date and time. And then another service, which is gaining a lot of attention now is a service called Baitoru Talk. Workplace communication and shift management can be covered by this Baitoru Talk. What happens as a result is that we can know who is leaving, who is quitting the job opportunity. And also, we can know where vacant positions happening. As a result, we can make proposals to customers from our side to let them use our service Baitoru. Dip AI concept is we'd like to be connected with users, job seekers and customers, employers on a constant basis. Next is about Baitoru Talk. I briefly mentioned this Baitoru Talk. The Baitoru Talk service is pretty much well appreciated. McDonald, all of their directly operated stores are using Baitoru Talk. And they are also asking their franchisees -- they are encouraging their franchisees to use Baitoru Talk as well. Now as many as 34,000 people are using Baitoru Talk, and the target we have is 2 million. We believe this 2 million target is highly likely to be achieved. We have new grads. We are expecting 454 new grads to join our company in April next year. We held a welcome ceremony the other day. And we are continuously working on this recruitment. And in fiscal 2027, we are aiming to hire more than 1,000 new grads. Now the total number of employees is becoming bigger and bigger. So we need to hire a lot to achieve net increase in terms of the number of headcounts. So in addition to new grads, we've been hiring new mid-carriers. The target has been 100, but we already hired 134. So the number -- although the number of salespeople headcount decreased in the previous fiscal year on a temporary basis, it's recovering. By the way, our sales is directly affected by the number of salespeople we have. So we have to make sure we keep increasing the number of salespeople. Operation reform, leveraging AI technologies and solutions, we are making a good progress, solution-based sales structure. Actually, this is our 28th year since our establishment, and this is the first big scale organizational change. We have a lot of customers. So handover has been quite tough, but now the situation has been stabilizing. Now we are being able to be more offensive. The solution-based sales structure, when we are introducing this new organization, we've been able to consolidate some of our workplaces. For example, our headquarters is located in Grand Tower in Roppongi. And now sales offices previously located in Shinjuku and other areas are now consolidated into Roppongi. And as a result, we've been able to enhance the level of teamwork and philosophy penetration is getting even higher. So we are quite happy with this change. Again, handover took -- required a lot of energies, but again, we are happy that we've been able to make this transformation. On November 11, as every year, we are planning to hold a conference. This year, the theme is Labor force solution. We're going to introduce various companies' initiatives. And also, we are inviting Shin Hara, Track and Field Coach, Aoyama Gakuin University. So if your time allows, please participate this conference. We are also planning to hold an IR Day on November 17. Please participate this event as well. That's it from me. Thank you.

This is Shidachi, and I would like to explain from my side. First of all, this is the consolidated results for the second quarter. Sales were down 0.6% from the previous year, and it was JPY 13 billion. And the reason for the decline was that the transition to solution structure required the sales staff to take over the responsibility of companies that they were in charge of. And as a result, they were unable to conduct a sufficient sales activities to find new customers and drill down on existing customers. Now that the handover has been completed, the volume of sales activities has returned to the pre-transition level. And in addition, the number of sales reps have turned positive. And as Tomita-san has explained, due to the Othello Project, we expect the sales rate -- sales growth rate to be in the high single digit in the fourth quarter. And operating profit was JPY 2 billion, down 40.9% from the previous year. The negative growth was due to the upfront investments, including advertising and system development cost for Spot Baitoru, which continued from the first quarter, and this was in line with the forecast at the beginning of the year. And here are the sales trend of Media Services compared to the market. Please refer to the black line graph. The job-to-applicant ratio, which is generally linked to the market growth rate declined 6.6% in the second quarter. And the market has been gradually improving, but the market condition deteriorated in the second quarter. Especially, we believe that the food and beverage, and retail sectors were weak. However, this was due to the temporary increase in the sense of sufficient manpower. And since there is still a structural shortage of manpower, we expect the market to return to a gradual recovery trend again. And in comparison to DIP's media sales growth rate, DIP's growth rate is well above the market growth rate. So even though DIP has experienced negative growth, we continue to gain market share. DIP is not losing market share to other companies. Next, moving on to SG&A expenses. First, personnel expenses. Last year, there was a JPY 240 million decrease in expenses due to reversal of the provision for special bonuses. So excluding that effect, the increase in personnel cost was JPY 170 million, and this is due to the strengthening of mid-career hires in this fiscal year. Next is ads and promotion costs. The ads and promotion cost ratio increased by 5.8 percentage points due to increased investment in Spot Baitoru in addition to existing services. The increase in other expenses was mainly due to an increase in ground rent following the expansion of the head office. So next, moving on to the full year forecast. There is no change from the forecast disclosed at the time of the announcement of the full year financial results in April. So next is talking about the forecast for sales and profit, and there's no change from the information disclosed at the time of the full year financial results announcement in April. So now I would like to talk about the progress in the Personnel Recruiting Services Business. The next page shows the breakdown of the 0.5% sales growth rate for media in the terms of number of contract companies and unit price. So first, the number of contract companies is minus 7.6% from the previous year. And as reported in the consolidated results page earlier, the transition to a solution structure in June increased the number of sales employees taking over responsibility for companies, which slowed the acquisition of new contracts and contract with companies that we have business in the past. However, on the other hand, the unit price for a company is up 7.5% from the previous year. Since the first quarter of previous fiscal year was plus 6.1%, the increase in unit price per client has accelerated. This is as in the first quarter, we continue to gain market share from the competing media, especially for large enterprise and HR companies. The next is user KPI. Both app downloads and MAU are growing steadily. And as a result, second quarter sales of overall personal recruiting service and media and permanent placement services combined declined 0.6% year-on-year. And I have already explained the strategy for the personnel recruitment services business in general, so I will skip this part. And this is the current fiscal year's plan for the personnel recruitment services business, and there's no change. So I will skip the explanation of this page. Next, moving on to the DX business. Here are the line for the KOBOT series, but there are no updates, so I will skip this page. First quarter sales in the DX business were down 0.9% from the previous year. Flow product sales declined year-on-year due to decrease in the number of media service subscribers. And for the stock products, growth was temporarily slow because of lack of customer acquisition in media for hiring and recruiting. On the other hand, sales grew in the sales promotion support and the recent ARR grew to JPY 1 billion level. Company subject to monthly billing was also affected by the decrease in the number of media subscribers and was down 7.4% from the previous year. This is the KPI for DX business and the increase in ARPU is due to the increase in the number of locations per company using MEO KOBOT. This is the progress of our DX business strategy. In the recruiting and HR domain, Spot Baitoru Job Posting Function was launched by Baitoru Talk in September. In addition, we are considering the possibility of starting to charge for dip AI during this fiscal year. So please look forward to it. And this is the plan for DX business. And since there is no change, I will skip the explanation on this page. Thank you very much.

Well, this year, we are expecting the profit to decline on a year-on-year basis, but the dividend is going to be remaining the same. Payout ratio is expected to reach 62%. Interim dividend is JPY 47; year-end, JPY 48; in total, JPY 95 on a full year basis. Now we'd like to show you a short video on September 5 and October 3, again, we held seminars targeting our customers. And this video is available on our official YouTube. We have an archive. So if you are interested in to show the full version, please take a look later. For today, we'd like to show the highlight version. The speakers are Professor Yuichiro Mizumachi, who is the expert of Labor Act. He is quite famous, and he has a big influence in the area. And another speaker is Mr. Makoto Hayashi. He is a former prosecutor general. He is also well known for serving as Chairperson as an independent committee for the Johnny & Associates Inc. The theme of the talk is how companies should act to this unpaid wage situation. [Presentation] [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]